Poetry. Los Angeles is a city of façade, of sunlight and shadow, a world of ambiguity that distorts memory and heightens desire. The film noir protagonist of the 40s and 50s has been transformed into a "private-I" who drives down these mean freeways and slouches toward the self to be born. We bask in the glare of paradise and wait for something ominous to happen. Before us - the open urban territory, the palpable sense of expectation, the lethal relation between the sexes.